I can burn CD's now, yay, but have a million questions...

[marcfrick2112]

HI Everyone, Thanks to the generous authors of MakeCD, I can burn CD's...sort of. Have no probs. burning backups of 2 hdd partitions, tho it takes some time.. But copying a CD is not practical, it took like over an hour to copy a VCD...
OK, I am guessing that the bottleneck is the A1200's built-in IDE interface? Second, after installing the CD burner , my HD light seems to be constantly lit, sometimes dim, after boot-up it looks pretty bright, yet I can't hear the HD actually doing anything. Only when I have MakeCD running does the light go off. (it's a LiteOn CD/DVD burner, not sure of the model #, but according to the box, will read or write practically anything....,)
Also, anyone know if it's possible to have MakeCD burn say just a few directories to a cd, rather than the whole partition? Most of my partitions are too big to fit on one CD..

Oh, my system: A1200 PowerTower P5 1260 @ 50MHz, DCE 1230 SCSI, 128MB Fast RAM, OS3.9 w/BB 1 &2 8.5 GB IDE HD, LiteOn 20x DVD writer (that's all it says for model number)
I suppose I should just register Frying Pan to burn a DVD, but I really want to just back up my sys: as quickly and cheaply as possible.

Any Ideas? Many Thanks  :-?  :crazy:

[A4000_Mad]

Also, anyone know if it's possible to have MakeCD burn say just a few directories to a cd, rather than the whole partition? Most of my partitions are too big to fit on one CD.

Yes indeed. My own method is to create a drawer called 'Container' and put everything I want written to CD inside it. I then drop the 'Container' drawer into the appropriate window of MakeCD. This writes the contents of the drawer to CD  :-)

A4000 Mad

[Rabbi]

>OK, I am guessing that the bottleneck is the A1200's built-in IDE interface?

Exactly!  The way to resolve this issue is to purchase & install this piece of h/w: Elbox FastATA 1200 MK-III controller.  This sped up my CD burning by a factor of 2, effectively just slightly more than halving my burn time.  Mind you, the HD that's attached to it must be at least PIO-4 capable.

As far as your LED light on almost constantly, I'm clueless on that one.

>Also, anyone know if it's possible to have MakeCD burn say just a few directories to a cd, rather than the whole partition? Most of my partitions are too big to fit on one CD..

Sorry, the only way that I know how is that you must state which directory to find the data in.  You will have to burn a multisession CD using smaller directories each until you've filled up your CD or you'll just have to create a new folder that'll be no more than 700MB in length that you'll copy all the folders & data to that you want to back-up onto the CD in one complete burn session.  I use MakeCD's Tracks folder for that as my default data folder.

[marcfrick2112]

Hey A4000 Mad, ya know I thought the same thing tonight....Trying again.... Although I found out you can add directories one at a time, helpful....but a bit tedious for everyday use.
Thanks for the tip. Just curious, how long does it take you to copy a CD with MakeCD?

PS, A4000's ROCK!
 :-D

[marcfrick2112]

Thanks everyone,

@Rabbi: Oh, man I don't want to do major surgery on my A1200 tower....I know that IDE interface requires taking out ROMs , etc. Yuck... I have no probs. taking Amiga's apart, but my OWN '060 miggy??
Is there a less drastic option? I believe Elbox make another IDE interface that is just plug in and go?

Also, my HD is several years old, I don't even know if it's PIO-4 (?) capable....Hmm, sorry, know more about SCSI than IDE at this point......

Any clarification would be helpful....

{suddenly feeling very nervous}

[motorollin]

A less drastic option than installing the FastATA would be to install a SCSI card and replace your drives. More expensive, but much faster even than the FastATA, and leaves your Amiga's CPU free to do other things during drive access.

For the record, I bought a FastATA a while back and gave up getting it to work properly.

--
moto

[Rabbi]

They make a plug-in for the Z-IV slot.  There's no other way around it.  Once you do it, you'll be glad you did.  I didn't like the fact that you must permanently remove the RF shielding, though, nor the fact that you could never use the HD cradle, as this add-on interferes with both items.  I've got a thick piece of cardboard on the bottoms of my 2 2.5" HDs wrapped around with electrical tape so that it won't short out either the A1200 or the HD.  My A1200 is still in the original desktop shell.

Given the size that your HD is that you descibe in your first posting, I'm 100% sure that it's at least a PIO-5, if not a PIO-6 type.

If you feel nervous about doing it yourself, I can come up there sometime on a Sunday & perform the surgery myself, for free.  I worked up in Madison last year & was commuting 2½ hours each way every work day for the first month of the contract.  Whereabouts in the Badger do you live?  You can write me at my e-mail account listed in my profile, if you want to.

[marcfrick2112]

Hi Moto, Well I have a SCSI board already, but SCSI drives are more expensive as you said, but mostly harder to find....and honestly, I want to get something out of my IDE drive that I just bought....

I need to find a SCSI rummage sale  :-D

[keropi]

get an IDE->scsi 50pin adaptor, there is one HERE

[A4000_Mad]

marcfrick2112 wrote:
Hey A4000 Mad, ya know I thought the same thing tonight....Trying again.... Although I found out you can add directories one at a time, helpful....but a bit tedious for everyday use.
Thanks for the tip. Just curious, how long does it take you to copy a CD with MakeCD?

PS, A4000's ROCK!
 :-D

You're welcome. Copying a whole CD is still on my very loooong 'to do' list, but I should imagine it would depend greatly on the spec of your machine. I've only used MakeCD in an A4000/060 with IDE DVDrom/CD-RW Combo myself.

Yeah A4000's sure do ROCK mate  :-D  :-D  :-D

A4000 Mad